Novell layoff rumors swirled this week, but analysts were quick to dismiss any doomsday scenarios involving the SuSE Linux operating system. Current users of SuSE should not panic even if the 20% workforce cuts cited in recent news reports come to fruition, said Charles King, principal analyst for Pundit-IT Research, Hayward, California.

You are wrong, the panic is created on OSN on purpose. The naming of "SUSE and NOVELL and Layoffs" should only animate the pro GNOME people to come here to bash KDE even more and to promote their heavily broken GNOME desktop more. The aim for this article is basicly that OSN wants to manifest GNOME as the defacto standard desktop. For the article above, I didn't even knew that there was 20% cutoffs until OSN reported it. It's basicly reverse tactics.

Gnome is good for where Gnome is used now and should be used in the future. Where is that, the corporate desktop, technical workstations and (with a diet and some work) servers. Gnome is a nice Gui and I prefer it but when my sister asked me about Linux I gave her a KDE based distro. KDE is just more in line what I think users want and Gnome with what companies want. How can I say that? Look at RedHat, Sun and Novell Linux distributions, all set out for corporate space, all Gnome based. Now Look at Suse and Mandriva or any other desktop Linux, the use KDE.
KDE and Gnome just wound up in those camps because the mindset of the developers leaned apart and in my opinion they just donít compete for the same type of people anymore.

the big mistake of Novell was to aquire Ximian (Virus corp ) thanks to borgs like Icaza Friedman ecc now the company soffer of gnome syndrome.

It was never about Ximian, however much people tried to pretend it was when Novell took over Suse. However, Ximian's ridiculous bullshit attitude spreading inside Novell help a company who were already totally rudderless and hadn't a clue what they were buying into. They still don't.

As a SUSE user (as well as Debian/Kanotix) I can see that both Novell and the community are really putting their heart in SUSE, and I can see that it is going where it had never gone before.
It even makes financial good sense to focus on SUSE.
Worries? Just the opposite.

Novell will probably kill its NetWare OS. NetWare sounds old and most of its good parts have been ported to Linux so there is no marketing or technical sound reason not to kill it.

Suse is safe since they are a sound distro to base future Novell server OSes on. They made some money before Novell got them and to mess with them would be very, very stupid.

Ximian, didnít fit in the picture for me before, now it dose. Ximian is not a Gnome company, Ximian is a tools company. Even if they started Gnome, they are now Mono, this is significant for Novell since its main competitor is probably Microsoft and not Unix/Linux vendors (considering NetWare and its history).

They are also working on nice little >>future<< tools based on Mono (another reason to hold them) the people working on them are safe too. Only a fool would kill the projects that are supposed to make your platform more interesting then your competitors. Then there are the ported NetWare tools, they need maintaining and further development (if they have not been made irrelevant, like what was the name of their TCP/IP alternative?) thatís going to be a small staff.

So to recap, they need Suse for a base distro to build Novell Linux on. They need Ximian to build their nextgen tools to compete with Microsoft on their own turf. And thy need people to build the value added Server distro based on Suse and Mono. Everything else has to go and since the article mentioned 8 out of 10 NetWare users wanting to drop NetWare in 2006 I would say this is a good timing. Kill NetWare before NetWare kills you.

Exactly, when I said they started Gnome and now are Mono that meant they started as a Gnome company and are now a Mono company. The company part was implied. But even so there are lots of the Gnome founders working at Ximian so even the interpretation of >>they started Gnome<< the way he took it wouldnít be incorrect. But whoís arguing?

Miguel D'Icaza stated GNOME at RMS's suggestion while Miguel was a systems administrator at UNAM in Mexico. Miguel moved to the States and founded Helix which was renamed Ximian before being aquired by Novell.

> Ximian didn't start GNOME
>
> Miguel D'Icaza stated GNOME at RMS's suggestion while
> Miguel was a systems administrator at UNAM in Mexico.
> Miguel moved to the States and founded Helix which was
> renamed Ximian before being aquired by Novell.

Uhm, Ximian still didn't start GNOME as the initial commenter said. Miguel de Icaza didn't started GNOME either. It was RMS who had the idea of GNOME in the mid 80's. Miguel de Icaza initially was a KDE contributor when it first started but then set up quite a few KDE developers and got told to f--k off. During that time he was in the FSF board and yes also in that university of messico which he left without finishing. He then took up the idea of GNOME and started collecting tools around the globe (which got written by others) and started GNOME. To say the truth, without the people prior who wrote all the tools he adopted, there wouldn't be a GNOME at the end, so basicly it's not him who started it but the people who wrote the initial apps that he took over.

No actually. Gnome only came to fruition when KDE was started. RMS quite clearly recognised he'd missed the boat there.

Miguel de Icaza initially was a KDE contributor when it first started but then set up quite a few KDE developers and got told to f--k off.

He wasn't much of a contributor. What happened was, when he and the FSF people realised they didn't like the project and couldn't control KDE they went off (and the KDE contributors understandably didn't like it) and founded something they could control.

They are also working on nice little >>future<< tools based on Mono (another reason to hold them) the people working on them are safe too.

As any sort of manager, the the pointless, low-level, technology-wanking projects and positions like Mono would be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

They need Ximian to build their nextgen tools to compete with Microsoft on their own turf. And thy need people to build the value added Server distro based on Suse and Mono.

Errrr, no. Mono has absolutely zero chance of being profitable as an investment for Novell, and there are absolutely no next generation tools (whatever that means) for Mono whatsoever. It might be interesting for a company like Mainsoft because they're actually a tools company, but not even they make money from it. Mainsoft's main income is Microsoft .Net and J2EE integration. Mono is a lame duck project that barely works along with many other things Novell need to get rid of, like Netware and Groupwise. However, at least Netware and Groupwise are bringing in existing income, albeit declining.

Jack Messman has no intelligence for that sort of thing though. Without the right person at the top they will fail.

Novellís iFolder client uses C# if I remember correct and there are some others, thatís what I meant when saying >>future<< tools. Probably you are right and their strategy is shit, considering where they were and where they are they demonstrated skill in pissing market shares away.

But they have Suse, a good distro even after they got their hands on it, and they have Ximian still working on the only significant .NET compatible tool chain, and they just canít compete on any other level. You want Java, you go with Sun or even RedHat, but Novell? You want PHP, I donít think anybody even gives a damn about what distro that runs on, might even be Slakware as far as the user is concerned. Rails, Zope anything else? There is nothing out there for them except Java, thatís hopeless for them, and .NET. With Mono they have at least the potential for getting their foot into the door for a marked guarantied to exist for a while even if only do to Microsoft pumping money into it. There is no other server Linux distro out there with a Mono based stack. If they are smart they start working on compatibility to everything Microsoft allows them and come up with damn good alternatives for everything else. Maybe even with good and proprietary migration tools.

Actually, Novell/Suse have IBM.. IBM is the absolute key to any future for Suse. IBM has no Linux distribution of it's own and had stated many times that it does not wish to get into that business. Suse is as close as it gets to being IBM's Linux distribution. The two companies work very closely together and many have speculated that if it ever came to the point that Novell might go under, IBM would pick up Suse.

If Novell goes under and IBM buys Suse that is good and well for Suse and probably IBM but that does leave Ximian out in the cold. Not to mention that this arrangement isnít all that good for Novell, if they manage to die even with all that is going for them maybe they do deserve it but it is still sad to have the company just die.

No I don't think there is any need to panic. There are too many people at Novell who see it as a way of life and a pension when they retire, along with the private jets. Unfortunately, that comes from the top down of the company. If Novell are to survive they need to get rid of Jack Messman. They've also got lots of people hacking on lots of pointless software they don't use, and they've had a ridiculously indecisive history with stuff like Wordperfect.

Suse should basically take over Novell. I worried that Suse would lose a lot of their focus after the Novell takeover, and I was right. Novell are a clueless and directionless company. Get rid of Netware, get rid of Groupwise, get rid of the stuff that has stagnated and has no future and actually migrate your customers to what you say you're moving to - Linux. Do not come up with bullshit like running a Netware kernel on Linux and vice versa, no one's bloody interested. Migrate everything you need to Linux and sell it! If it works in the same way and better no one cares.

Novell has made no secret of its plans to attack the SMB market. The company last year rolled out the Market Start program, designed to accelerate open source adoption and provide SMB access to the Novell open source infrastructure.

They're going to have to make it an awful lot cheaper then, and the per user client licenses for the servers have got to go. It's going to have to be good and especially cheap to beat the clueless idiots who think it's great to install Microsoft SBS. That's going to be a market where they'll have to be clever - not Novell's forte, exactly.

It's ridiculous to suggest that Novell's alleged layoffs will in any way negatively affect their NLD, SUSE, and Ximian divisions. Those are some of the few parts of Novell that show promise. Everyone knows Novell is company that is changing directions... or maybe choosing a direction for the first time in a long while. Either way, high-level strategy changes require layoffs and acquisitions. They're done with the acquisitions, now comes the layoffs. If anything the soon-to-be-trimmer Novell might be able to afford more fulltime salaries in their Linux/OSS related divisions.

IBM surely has no reason to get in the distributions game. They're absolutely horrible at mass marketing client software. Rather, they are pitching server-side business applications that can serve a wide array of cross-platform clients including various Linux desktops (at least Red Hat and SUSE). Read about IBM Workplace, it's actually based on OpenOffice code. IBM would much rather contribute some fulltime staff to the GNOME or OpenOffice projects than acquire a Linux distribution.

It's going to have to be good and especially cheap to beat the clueless idiots who think it's great to install Microsoft SBS. That's going to be a market where they'll have to be clever - not Novell's forte, exactly.

Would you please elaborate on this statement?

How is installing the highly integrated and best value drop-in server OS equate to being a "clueless idiot"? Because it isn't fanboy linux? I bet you never even used SBS and/or ever had to make a business decision before in your life. Let me see you give the equivalent of the integrated Exchange/Outlook and remote capabilities on your cluefull OS.

1. I am not asking any customer to pay more money simply because they have employed a few extra people and want to put them on the network (and the server can handle it). How much does it cost Microsoft, or even Novell, personally when a company puts new users on their network. At least with Novell you get some desktop management and Zenworks stuff though.
2. You can't get more than one of these servers on the same network. This makes it extremely prohibitive when the company expands, and even more expensive when you realise you need to then go out and buy the full gambit of Windows 2003, Exchange and probably SQL Server if you use it.
3. Beyond about twenty users it becomes prohibitively expensive as the company expands, before you even get to the 75 user limit (can' remember exactly what the limit is).
4. It's been my experience that performance-wise, above twenty users Samba craps all over Windows.

Let me see you give the equivalent of the integrated Exchange/Outlook and remote capabilities on your cluefull OS.

Kolab, Outlook and/or Kontact on a KDE based desktop. Even factoring in an Outlook plugin for Kolab it's several times cheaper. Remote capabilities? SSH, command line admin Microsoft can only dream of, or graphical VNC/NX.

IBM does not need to market its products anymore than they already do. Everyone knows what they do and have to offer. It would be great for linux if IBM possessed their own distro. The amount of funds that could be spent referencing the future of linux would really help. Linux still has problems referencing package management. It's been years now and packages can still be a pain to install. Your average Joe has a snow balls chance in hell installing packages from source. Linux needs a package management program that can better help the average Joes out there.

IBM does not need to market its products anymore than they already do. Everyone knows what they do and have to offer. It would be great for linux if IBM possessed their own distro. The amount of funds that could be spent referencing the future of linux would really help. Linux still has problems referencing package management. It's been years now and packages can still be a pain to install. Your average Joe has a snow balls chance in hell installing packages from source. Linux needs a package management program that can better help the average Joes out there.

I totally agree. IBM's recent sale of their PC and Laptop division, discontinuation of OS/2 and the fact that their client base consists of businesses shows IBM's undettered and complete dedication to the average Joes of this world. :-P

I'll add the famous [/sarcasm] tag incase you didn't notice that my comment was dripping with it.

If IBM shipped their own Linux, they'd completely blow up any semblance of Linux being open - it'd be the most proprietary product the world had ever seen. And the myth of Linux would likely be destroyed.

SuSE is just getting their priorities right by cutting all unnessary luggage.Which is a good thing for continuity.For example Novell has a management consultancy branch who costs more than there's finacial benefit.